At a regional Hewlett-Packard event held in Singapore on October 18th, the keynote speaker said that companies in the Asia Pacific are more enthusiastic about migrating to the cloud than their Western counterparts.

The region is more ready than other regions on the planet,” says Wolfgang Wittmer, interim senior VP and general manager, Enterprise Services, Storage & Networking in the Asia Pacific & Japan.

This observation is apparently backed up by a recently survey on CIOs and CTOs which found that 58 percent of Chinese businesses are planning to move to the cloud. In India, the figure is 56 percent. In contrast, 32 percent of CIOs and CTOs in Europe and 34 percent in the US plan to move to the cloud.

Signs of this demand can be seen in the number of data centers being built in the region.

In APJ, new data center built annually will double between 2010 and 2014. By 2012, China will be the second-largest data center market in the world,” says EJ Bodnar, HP’s worldwide marketing director for Technology Consulting Services. This region is leapfrogging the world.

Recently, Google has announced plans to build facilities in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Already, cloud companies like Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com have already established data centers in Singapore.

Asia Pacific firms are also spending more on disaster recovery on the cloud, a sign of increasing reliance.

Google has acquired land in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore to build data centers in these three locations, it said Wednesday.

The data centers will be the “first Google proprietary data centers in Asia,” and will be fully owned and operated by the company, said Taj Meadows, the company’s policy communications manager for Asia Pacific.

More people are coming online every day in Asia than in any other part of the world, so locating data centers there is an important next stage of Google’s investment in the region, the company said Local data centers will help the company provide faster and more reliable access to Google’s services, it added.

here is a large surge in Internet use in Asia, particularly for consumer applications, said Jun Fwu Chin, research manager for virtualization and data center at IDC Malaysia.

A number of new data centers are coming up in the region as multinational Internet and hosting companies set up data centers to serve local customers, and also to meet governments regulations in some countries that require data to be handled locally, Chin said.

The company has acquired 2.45 hectares of land in Jurong West, Singapore, and another 15 hectares of land in Changhua County, Taiwan, to build the data centers. It has also acquired 2.7 hectares of land in Kowloon, Hong Kong, for a data center there.

Google expects to invest over US$100 million in each of the facilities in Taiwan and Hong Kong, including the cost of land, construction and technical equipment. It did not specify the size of the investment in Singapore.

The China Post news staff –Cable TV operators, information technology corporations, and digital content providers yesterday formed the Cloud Computing TV Forum (CCTF) to integrate technical know-how and resources to tap a new market estimated to have an annual value of up to NT$300 billion.

The new organization is another industry group in Taiwan to cultivate the market potential of the thriving cloud computing services.

Jiang Ren-teh, head of the Cable Broadband Institute in Taiwan (CBIT), was elected the first chairman of the CCTF.

One of the major goals of the CCTF is to establish a new platform allowing consumers to go online via the broadband TV networks and also retrieve the rich cloud computing contents in an intelligent application environment.

In a confirmation of Taiwan’s investment climate and the strength of its information/communications technology industry, Google, the world’s largest search engine, will invest over US$100 million to set up a data center spanning 15 hectares in space in Hsienhsi Township of Changhua County, announced the company yesterday (sep 28)

Google also announced decision to set up data centers in Singapore and Hong Kong, with the investment scale in Hong Kong also reaching US$100 million. It, however, didn’t publicize investment scale in Singapore.

This is the first time for Google to set up data centers in Asia. Presently, it has eight data centers in Europe and the U.S. and 15 offices in the Asia-Pacific region.

Google now has a branch company in Taiwan, with a paid-in capital of NT$2.1 billion. The company pointed out that the data center will be completed in one to two years, adding that the projected investment of US$100 million will be used in land purchase, construction, and procurement of technology and equipment.

Google noted that the decision to set up Asian data centers is for the purpose of deep-cultivating the Asian market, following surge in the Internet population in the Asia-Pacific market. Taiwan is selected as a site for Asian data centers, due to its market proximity, complete infrastructure, top-notch technological talents, and reasonable business regulations.

Search engine company to spend over $200m building facilities in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Google will invest over $200m to build data centres in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, the Search engine company’s first data centres in Asia.

According to Bloomberg, Google has already acquired land in the three South-east Asia countries. The company told Blomberg that the data centres in Hong Kong and Taiwan are expected to cost over $100m each. The move is a part of Google’s wider strategy to expand its presence in Asia. At present, Google leases data centres in Asia to offer services in the region.

The search engine company has a growing user base in several Asian countries including China and India, where the company’s services such as search, e-mail and online maps are popular. Google’s Android is also widely used in Asia, with most Asian smartphone makers using the mobile-phone operating system.

The operation of the Asian facilities are expected to begin one to two years after construction begins, said the company.

Meanwhile, The New York Times has reported that the next great expansion of the world’s digital infrastructure is under way in developing markets such as China, Brazil and Argentina.

A 10Networks, a California-based provider of application delivery controller and server load balancing solutions, has established a R&D center focusing on cloud computing in Taipei’s Nankang Software Park with an R&D, according to the company.

With a budget of US$2 million, the Taipei facility – the company’s fourth R&D center globally – will initially focus on development of an application program interface for a cloud computing platform, consisting of a management system for A 10Networks’ products to be finished by the end of 2011 as well as server management and development of services to be finished by the end of May 2012, the company indicated.

A 10Networks currently has 45% of revenues coming from the North America market and 35% from Japan, according to company CEO Lee Chen.

A 10Networks has about 1,200 clients around the world, and is adding over 100 more each quarter, Chen indicated. In Taiwan, A 10Networks’ clients include Chunghwa Telecom, Far EasTone Telecommunications, Asia Pacific Broadband Telecom, Vibo Telecom and Gamania Digital Entertainment.